An absolute waste of money

Blistering performances.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I had to stop watching after the first 15 minutes or so. I watched the initial bowling scenes, and realized that I could in no way cheer for any of these characters to succeed. Why? Well, a few scenes earlier they were getting high, then got the munchies, then ate a couple of slices of a pizza that they were in the process of delivering. Then one of them says to cough it back up, and they actually spit out chewed-up pizza back into the box and try to form it so as to look like it was untouched and that nothing happened. Then they delivered it to an innocent, hapless, unsuspecting customer. Beyond repulsive. There was nothing at all amusing about that scene, nor the ones that followed. I'm not the type who feels obliged to watch a movie all the way through, for better or worse. Possibly the movie got better, I don't know. But I wasn't going to waste my time finding out.

As a romantic comedy, there is absolutely NO chemistry here between lead characters "Ross" (Ross Patterson, who proves he is not accomplished enough as an actor to be trusted to assume a first name for a role, other than his own) and "Lindsay" (Tara Reid, who remains good at pouting, if nothing else). Clayne Crawford as "Ross'" sidekick "Mike" completes a trifecta of woeful performances here, with an oddly inflected dialect which seems dubbed by a loop group person for whom English is a second language. That director Tommy Reid elicited such a trio of bottom-tier efforts is no testimonial to the virtues of Hollywood nepotism, and the seemingly endless list of 24 producers (including Tara and Tommy) prove the adage about too many cooks making a rancid roast.Unfortunately, there is no hint that the so-called brains behind 7-10 SPLIT (as STRIKE was initially, and more aptly, titled) were attempting to spoof sports movies, though the climax echoes (no doubt unintentionally) Kevin Costner's golf movie, TIN CUP. Instead, they seemingly tried to put out a SERIOUS version of "stoners meet ROCKY," without so much as a Cheech Marin or Burt Young cameo. The best they could do for Tinseltown's senior citizens was a bit part as PBA commissioner by Ray Wise. Every nuance of this movie seems totally predictable, from the leads' on-and-off-and-on again relationship, to the lonely big mansion scene to the temptations of booze, groupies, booze, drugs, booze, fame--and booze on "Ross." Speaking of the devil, Ross Patterson wrote the screenplay, but if 100 chimps typed at 100 typewriters for 100 hours, chances are at least 15 or 20 of them would do better. If I rated on a straight curve, STRIKE would merit a "1" or "2" out of 10, so "4" may seem overly generous to some viewers.

Just to give you an idea of where I am coming from: I loved the National Lampoons movies, Monty Python, Adam Sandler movies, Ben Stiller, Will Farrell etc. But this movie is not in that league. This is not the worst movie I have ever seen, and I did manage to watch all of it, but the acting, direction, sets, script etc. were pretty bad. I did not laugh once. In the first part of the film they portray the two leading males as a pair of fun loving guys trying to get a break as actors but stuck delivering pizzas. I gather that this opening bit was to get us (the viewers) to identify with the characters as well as create a good board for the plot to spring from. But the scene where the two guys spit out the pizza they'd been chewing on and reform it back into a pizza to be delivered, created a very different impression to what the director attempts to cast later. If the idea is that they are a pair of brainless imps that go around doing stupid things that we cannot help but laugh at because it is so well done, then so be it. But when the plot gets in full swing, somehow we are expected to believe that the same pair are now naturally so damn cool that the whole of the US just falls for them. Another thing that got me was that they fell far short of the level of cool, or wit required to make a splash even on a pre-scripted C-grade film let alone a national sports event. When I was about 15 or younger I may have chuckled at a few scenes here and there and still walked away from it feeling underdone, and I think I am being generous there.

It's the October Holidays now here in Australia, which means day time television. Which frankly, is trouble - Pretty much anything on day time TV, from cooking shows from lame made-for-TV movies is pretty woeful. Nothing pains me more than watching day time television on Australian free-to-air. But as I have Cable Television, you'd be thinking "Hey, you don't have to deal with crappy shows and movies!" Oh yes I do..Someone at Foxtel thought it would be a really funny joke to play "7-10 Split". I'm surprised they were able to stop laughing for a long enough to even get the movie. But why is this movie such a huge joke? Well, let me tell you why! Now, whatever you're thinking right now about "7-10 Split", it's worse. This movie is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Well, actually, it's worse than what I originally thought. "7-10 Split" doesn't even deserve to be put in the same barrel. If I had to place it somewhere, (And it's hard decide, I tell you) it would in the middle of an erupting volcano."7-10 Spilt". Catchy, yes? "Well, it must be about bowling!" Correct! Well, kind of. It's actually about a struggling actor. "What? Then why is it called '7-10 Split'?". Aha, it's actually about a struggling actor who's trying to make his name by becoming a bowler! Yes, you heard right, he wants to become a known actor.. by bowling! How did they come up with a plot like this? Of all of the things to make a movie about, this is a pretty poor choice. I'm thinking a bunch of producers got drunk one night and stoned one night and picked a script by random and then threw it to the equally drunk and stoned director. But it gets better. It stars Tara Reid – who for the past couple of years has done nothing but appear in a commercial for an Australian telephone company. Great… But now here comes the truly horrible part – I have to try and describe why this movie is so bad. Well, that's a real big problem, because everything is wrong. I don't want to waste your time listing everything there is to do when making a movie, so I'll try and tell you some of the worst things, yes some of the worse things! Which actually is like trying to find a needle in a hay stack.If I had to attack one element off the top of my head, I would have to say the set design. In this movie, the main character goes around to several different bowling tournaments around the country. Simple, right? Just get a couple of different bowling alleys, clear them up and put some banners around, right? WRONG! Instead, someone arranged to go film at one of their mates' office block, clear out all the cubicals, grab some chairs, slap in a double lane bowling alley, and hang some sheets around to make it appear like a room. Well, apart from you can see the pins holding up the sheets, and you can see the gaps in the tops of the sheets. Now, this is bad enough, but to make it worse, they use the same location over and over, for almost all the tournaments! Yeah, you are reading this correctly. They just changed the banners.Now it's one thing to have bad sets, but to make it worse, the acting is horribly lame and completely unfunny or convincing, there's some serious scripting problems (It's like no one ever read or edited it), the directing is dull, there's product placements for Beer Nuts and Guinness beer (Which I will point out was put in a fridge at one stage – It's meant to be served at room temperature) the cinematography is bad, the film looks like someone nicked some film from a porno set, the music sounds like it was nicked while they were there and the wardrobe is disgusting. There's more.. but I'm becoming bored.This would all be forgivable if the film had some charm, but there is none. It feels like there was no passion involved in making this film. On no level does this film ever appeal, in fact, if this film had been made 60 or so years earlier, I bet it would have been used by the SS to torture war prisoners. Given the choice, I'd rather be stabbed and left to bleed to death.Oh, and I just want to say, I only saw about half an hour of it. Which was about half an hour too much.